Starting from the basis of these views as to the nature of man, Paracelsus divides him into seven factors or principles, which are the same as those we also find in the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians, among the Neoplatonists and in the Kabbalah. In the first place, man is a physical-bodily being, and therefore subject to the same laws as every other body. He is, in this respect, therefore, a purely “elementary” body. The purely physical-bodily laws combine into an organic life-process, and Paracelsus denotes this organic sequence of law by the terms “_archæus_” or “_spiritus vitæ_.” Next, the organic rises into a region of phenomena resembling the spiritual, but which are not yet properly spiritual, and these he classifies as “astral” phenomena. From amidst these astral phenomena, the functions of the “animal soul” make their appearance. Man becomes a being of the senses. Then he connects together his sense impressions according to their nature, by his understanding or mind, and the “human soul” or “reasoning soul” becomes alive in him. He sinks himself deep into his own mental productions, and learns to recognise “spirit” as such, and thus he has risen at length to the level of the “spiritual soul.” Finally, he must come to recognise that in this spiritual soul he is experiencing the ultimate basis of universal being; the spiritual soul ceases to be individual, to be separated. Then arises the knowledge of which Eckhart spoke when he felt no longer that _he_ was speaking within himself, but that in him the Root-Being was uttering Itself. The condition has come about in which the All-Spirit in man beholds Itself. Paracelsus has stamped the feeling of this condition with the simple words: “And that is a great thing whereon to dwell: there is naught in heaven or upon earth that is not in Man. And God who dwelleth in Heaven, He also is in Man.”